Denouncing the Biden Administration's Immigration Policies

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, this country is facing real problems. There is an erosion of trust in our government and institutions.

The right to bodily autonomy is under attack across the Nation. The State of Maryland needs assistance in rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge so that the Port of Baltimore, whose economic impact touches communities across the country, can reopen. Our immigration system cannot function because Congress has failed to reform it for over 30 years.

Instead of responding to these problems, House Republicans are wasting our time, yet again, on another meaningless immigration resolution.

At Donald Trump's direction, they refuse to work toward solutions for our broken immigration system, so instead, all they have to offer is a bunch of empty rhetoric.

This resolution, like the others we have considered in recent months, will do nothing to solve the situation at the border.

Not a single dollar will go to help our law enforcement agents at the border as a result of this resolution.

Not a single person will be denied unlawful entry to this country as a result of this resolution. Not a single community will be made safer as a result of this resolution.

This resolution is nothing more than a highlight reel of the dubious talking points of immigration that we have heard over and over from Republicans since President Biden was sworn into office.

It is the same legislating by press release that we have become accustomed to in this historically unproductive Congress.

The resolution itself is simply a rehash of the resolution we passed a few weeks ago. Republicans are so out of ideas that it even has the same exact title and much of the same content as the last resolution.

That resolution listed all the ways that President Biden supposedly could secure the border and essentially asks the administration to reverse every policy it has implemented on immigration, even though we know that doing so would not be effective.

Today's resolution simply lists most of those policies again, and this time it just condemns the administration. What a waste of time.

It is important to remember how we got here. Earlier this Congress, House Republicans passed their partisan, cruel, and unworkable border bill, H.R. 2.

Republicans spent a year saying that H.R. 2 is the only way to secure the border, even though they know that it cannot become law, having failed twice to pass the Senate, receiving just 32 votes earlier this year.

Then they insisted that the price of helping to protect Ukraine against Russian aggression was enacting harsh border enforcement legislation.

Senate Republicans even managed to convince some Democrats to agree on a very harsh border bill in the Senate, a bill that Minority Leader McConnell called the toughest border bill in 30 years, but Republicans could not take ``yes'' for an answer.

Donald Trump said that he didn't want to do anything that might actually help at the border in an election year because he wants immigration as a campaign issue. Other Republicans quickly agreed.

Folding to the cult of Donald Trump, Speaker Johnson declared the bill dead on arrival in the House with the rest of the Republican Conference quickly falling in line.

Republicans showed clearly what Democrats have been saying over and over again, that they don't want to do anything that would really help address our broken immigration system. They clearly have given up.

Instead of solving the problem, Republicans merely want to continue to weaponize the border as a political issue for the election year with pointless votes on meaningless resolutions that accomplish nothing and are full of misleading information.

Let's review the facts once again. The resolution complains that the Biden administration is not removing enough people.

However, the administration is removing people at a very significant pace and in ways that I am concerned may present some due process violations.

Since the end of title 42 last May, the Biden administration has removed or returned over 630,000 individuals and members of family units, just since last May.

This is more than the number of people removed or returned in all of fiscal year 2019 under the Trump administration.

The resolution also alleges that the Biden administration is violating the mandatory detention statutes by not detaining enough people.

However, no administration, including the Trump administration, has ever been able to comply with those statutes because no Congress has ever appropriated the extraordinary levels of funding such compliance would require.

To detain everyone that the law requires to be held in mandatory detention would require Congress to appropriate over $35 billion a year, a number 10 times higher than what Congress appropriated this year or then-President Trump ever requested for detention.

When Democrats have proposed giving DHS the resources it needs to do its job, the Republicans have consistently said ``no''.

We need to work together to address our broken immigration system. Enforcement alone cannot fix it. We know this because an enforcement- only approach has largely failed for three decades.

We need to update our immigration system so that it meets the needs of our country. We need a balanced, bipartisan approach that expands lawful pathways.

This will help relieve pressure on the border and allow people to come to this country in an orderly and efficient way, but Republicans don't want to engage in real legislating that might actually solve problems and deliver meaningful reform.

They want to continue to demagogue and fearmonger with meaningless resolutions containing nothing but empty rhetoric designed to score cheap political points.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman of three things that he seems to have forgotten.

One, just since the end of title 42 last May, the Biden administration has removed or returned over 630,000 individuals and members of family units.

This is more than the number of people removed or returned in all of fiscal year 2019 under the Trump administration.

I would also remind the gentleman that this legislation does nothing. It simply denounces the Biden administration. It does nothing. It has no operable clause. It is pure propaganda for political reasons. It does nothing to solve the immigration problem.

Third, I would remind the gentleman that the Senate negotiated a very strong immigration bill approved by Senator Lankford, the second-most conservative Member of the Senate. Mitch McConnell said it was the strongest immigration bill he had ever seen. The Senate was willing to pass it until former President Trump said, don't pass it because I would rather have an election issue than solve the problem.

The fault for the immigration problem now is President Trump's for preventing the Senate from passing that bill and the Republicans' fault for going along with him politically.

Jayapal).

All the Members on the other side forget several things. They forget that we had the strongest border bill that might have gone a long way toward solving this problem that the Senate was willing to pass, but President Trump said don't pass. He said in so many words: I don't want a solution; I want a campaign issue.

They forget that the President has asked for a lot more money so that instead of someone coming in and claiming asylum--maybe he deserves it; maybe he doesn't--and getting a date in court 5 years later and then disappearing, you would have enough judges to give him a date in a couple of weeks and either grant him asylum if he is entitled to it or deport him swiftly if he is not entitled to it.

The Republicans won't vote the money and they won't vote the bill that would solve or go a long way toward solving the problem.

They also forget that this resolution doesn't do anything. All it does is denounce Biden. That is all they have for this Congress, resolution after resolution denouncing Biden, and H.R. 2, which is so impossible that it got only 32 votes in the Senate, a Senate where there are 49 Republican Senators.

They don't want to solve the problem. They just want to talk about it. That is all they are doing about it now. It is total nonsense and not worthy of the time of this body.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I remind the gentlemen and gentlewomen on the other side of the aisle that when you talk about various victims of migrant crime, the FBI statistics show that the percentage of crime committed by migrants is lower than the percentage of crime committed by native-born Americans. Migrants, legal and illegal, seem to be more law-abiding, on average, than native-born Americans. So, to use a specific example to say that this is the fault of the immigration policy is nonsense.

Jackson Lee).

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee for yielding.

I would like to pose a rhetorical question to the gentleman: Where is the wall? Where is the wall that has been talked about now for a decade-plus?

I ask because others have had the same message, and here they come. Where is the wall?

Our friends on the other side of the aisle seem to fill their legislative agenda with platitudes, promises, broken promises, and ``I am going to get it done.'' The American people don't need ``I am going to get it done.''

What the American people need is to ensure that we have added more Border Patrol officers, which we have done under the Biden administration's plans. We will be doing that for Customs and Border Patrol. We will be doing that under the Biden effort. In addition, we will be doing more training and more recruitment.

We know that a wall, no matter how much you do, is always going to be overcome--not like the song, ``We Shall Overcome,'' when we do want to overcome in a better life and in a better world.

This is just a lot of talk. Mr. Speaker, I came to say that here is another resolution. There is no action in this resolution. It is a lot of talk.

As you remember, Mr. Speaker, how we got here was a bill that was so crushing that Republicans in the Senate could not vote for it, and that was H.R. 2. The resolution condemns many of the same policy choices on immigration, and they asked to be reversed in the last resolution. That is how bad it is. They want to reverse their own work.

Republicans now claim that no legislation is needed. Isn't that ridiculous, Mr. Speaker? They now have a bill that says that the other bills were not needed, don't listen to us.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote against this senseless, do- nothing resolution. Let's come together and support President Biden's leadership on immigration reform.

Mr. Speaker, whatever complaints House Republicans may have with the Biden administration's immigration policies, this resolution will do absolutely nothing to address them.

They have had plenty of opportunities to work with Democrats on bipartisan solutions to reform our broken immigration system, and they have walked away time and again. Most recently, they rejected a bipartisan border deal negotiated by one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate because Donald Trump told them to. He and they would rather preserve the issue for the upcoming election than actually work to solve problems.

So, here we are again, for the third time already this year, with a meaningless, nonbinding resolution that talks tough and accomplishes nothing. What better way to sum up this Republican Congress?

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this meaningless resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source